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“You have to. You’re my art now. And I can do whatever I want with you.”
I drag the brush across to his other hipbone and scrawl my initials there.
Emerson’s eyes snap open. His hands move to my hair, but I’m already kneeling. He threads his fingers through, hard, as I take him into my mouth. It’s like being in the ocean. Truly, there’s too much of him to handle. But I have his hands, too. I have all of him. He pushes in deep, nudging to the back of my throat. I swallow around him.
The sound he makes is between a grunt and a growl and before it’s all the way out of his mouth, I’m being lifted. Hauled, really. My legs go around his waist to catch me. My thighs meet hard muscle. His mouth meets mine. Captures it. My paintbrush clatters to the ground behind him and then snaps beneath his foot.
He backs himself against the wall, letting it take all his momentum. One hand levers me onto his cock and he thrusts in. The only warning I have is a flash in his eyes. Emerson uses both hands to move me, and I use both hands, too. To stay with him. Fingernails locking into his shoulders. His pupils get larger at the whimper that escapes me. No matter how much I wanted him, how much I missed him, it’s a stretch.
“Yes,” he hisses.
Emerson doesn’t look away while he invades, inch by inch, until I’m settled against him. His eyes change. They don’t go into that faraway protective space. They get closer. Oh, it hurts. I’m looking into the fear and pain and uncertainty of the days we were separated.
No. I won’t let them stay.
I put a fingertip at the ridge of his clavicle and paint something else.
Words.
I don’t hide words in my paintings as a general rule. Usually, the only letters that appear on a canvas are my initials. I’ve already written those into his skin. But I want him to know this feeling, too.
I love you.
“Daphne,” he murmurs. “You can’t.”
“It’s too late,” I whisper into his mouth. “I painted you. And I know you felt it.”
He presses in deeper and it makes me tighten around him. Emerson grunts. “It was never—so tactile before. How am I supposed to give that up?”
“You don’t.”
Something happens to him. I don’t know what. I can only feel his balance change. Emerson pushes off the wall and goes to his bedroom. I spend the trip kissing his neck. His jaw. His lips. Pressing half-moon fingerprints into his shoulder blades.
The two of us tumble into his bed like it’s a warm sea. Emerson pins me to the pillows. To the mattress. His weight over my body takes the breath from my lungs. It crushes my heart. Brings it back to life. He was holding himself together to get to this moment.
Emerson fucks me with his face buried in the side of my neck. He’s more solid than a frame. Than the walls around us. Than any closed door. But any frame can be pulled apart under too much pressure. Any wall can collapse. Any door can be kicked in.
I have the hazy, half-formed thought that I’m the ocean now. I’m the escape.
It had to be so heavy, out there alone. It had to be so—
So—
Cold.
There’s no cold now. Only heat. Emerson’s lost in me, his hands working over my hair, my hips. He’s not too lost to pay attention, though. He angles his hips so I get the friction I need. Heat and friction combine where he’s fucking me and spread outward through my veins. I’m soaked through with it.
A drop of something shimmering and gold and explosive settles over my clit. It bleeds out through the ocean of us.
Emerson hooks his hand around the back of my knee and pushes my leg up. “More,” he says. “Mine.”
And then he’s so deep, with all the rest of his strength, that the gold shimmer erupts in a hot wave. All my blood burns with it. All my muscles. Emerson licks at my tongue, and I’m aware at the final second that he’s licking the sound out of my mouth. The moan. The cry. His name.
“Fuck,” he says. Or I think he says. There’s one more pulse that curls my toes. Emerson sits up. The sheets and blankets move. I open my eyes and see his face. He’s spent. At the end of his endurance. He reaches over for something and the lights in the bedroom go out.
He falls to his pillow in the dark, pulling me close. I need to be closer. I hook my knee over his hip. He glides his hand to just under my ass and rests it there, panting.
Sleep is coming. I don’t have much time before it takes me. I use it to trace his eyebrows. His lips.
He mumbles something.
“What did you say?”
Emerson clears his throat. He’s drifting already. I don’t blame him. “Paint,” he says. “Please.”
A shoreline. Waves, lapping across his chest. I fall asleep painting my initials over his heart.
